THE WEAPON OF DEFENCE 81 



of wild bees, but it seems curious that, until well 

 on in the nineteenth century, apiarists did not 

 seem to realise that it was not necessary to stupefy 

 the bees completely before attempting to do any- 

 thing with them, so that if they wished to take the 

 honey without destroying the colony altogether, 

 their practice was completely to stupefy the 

 bees, using for this purpose powdered puff-balls, 

 burnt below the hive until the bees dropped 

 senseless. 



Nowadays, such drastic measures are understood 

 to be unnecessary, and the apiarist, to the astonish- 

 ment of the layman, handles living and moving 

 bees like so many currants, scooping them up 

 in handfuls, shaking them and brushing them 

 from their combs with complete impunity. When 

 honey is coming in fast, most colonies do not 

 even require smoking, but towards the end of the 

 season, at the time when the last crop of honey 

 is being gathered, they become more troublesome, 

 and it is necessary sometimes to use cloths soaked 

 in carbolic acid solution to cover the hives and 

 keep the bees from coming up in a vindictive 

 army. 



A very useful device is a kind of valve arrange- 

 ment, which is slipped under the rack containing 

 the honey we wish to take off. The bees in this 

 rack descend to the main chamber of the hive 

 through the valve, and are unable to get back, 

 with the result that in a few hours the rack is 

 6 



